


The God of Ohio

by Marasa



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Acid, Depression, Hallucinations, Josh is the only good thing in Tyler's mind, LSD, Loneliness, M/M, Ohio, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Loathing, and he's not even real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 15:04:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13250745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Cross-legged in the middle of a barn at midnight with a hit of acid dissolving on his tongue, Tyler sees God.





	The God of Ohio

Cross-legged in the middle of a barn at midnight with a hit of acid dissolving on his tongue, Tyler sees God.

He didn’t even know he had LSD on him; Tyler finds the tabs buried in lint deep in his pocket. Ren, Stimpy and Spongebob- at first he can't decide which one to ingest because this is how uneventful his life now is, boiled down to nothing more than whichever cartoon character should taste the best. 

Here in Ohio on his uncle’s ranch, he mulls cartoon characters for far too long as a substitute for loud parties and degenerate friends and all the things that make life tolerable. 

Bad influences. 

They had been bad influences. 

At least that's what his mother had said when she threw him out.

Those bad influences fed him bitter drugs and held bottles of alcohol to his lips. They blew pungent smoke in his face that made him forget all about how dreadful life was and in those moments of forced binging, pain didn't exist. 

Bad influences crowded him, overwhelmed him, held him in their arms until his skin was burning and tears were streaming down his face for no reason and every reason all at once. Rats are pack animals that take care of their own and Tyler and his friends were filthy pests. 

They were loveless, void, but it didn't matter when Tyler was often too fucked up to fully remember just how terrible they were.

Tyler guesses the only way to beat bad influence is with no influence, because he's been sent to a farm in Ohio where nothing familiar exists. 

It's all cows and corn and silence that allows his mind to wander to depressing places. All that remains of influence is what he holds in his right hand and after a week, life’s boring enough to seriously consider the hierarchy of cartoon characters printed on doses of LSD. 

Tonight’s family friendly programming rests along the lifeline of his palm, compliments of Mark. 

Mark- a bad influence. 

Mark was the type of kid to hang out in trailer parks and take homemade acid from men with rough faces and few words. Always quantity over quality, Mark would share his bounty with Tyler, giving his friend one hit and then taking two himself. 

Tyler could never take two hits.

Two hits at once was incapacitating, dropping so low in your subconscious that there was the possibility of never being able to find an escape from one’s own head. Tyler admired Mark’s utter abandon, wishing he himself had the will to fuck it all and take the risk. 

Every weekend, the pair would sit on the floor of Mark’s room and listen to old vinyl records melt on the dodgy record player and once Tyler could taste battery acid and antifreeze on his tongue, the walls and ceiling would begin to melt too. 

With pupils flooding his irises, Mark had told Tyler that you get used to the taste of rat poison after a while.

Tyler didn’t want to get used to it.

He had seen what shitty acid did to the brain.

Paranoia’s victim, Mark would tell stories of shadow figures following him, how patterns on his grandmother’s couch formed faces that whispered nonsense and then Mark began saying how he could hear his neighbors through the walls conspiring against him. 

Someone was out to get him, Mark would say, and  _ they're out to get you too, Tyler.  _

Those words were not what Tyler wanted to hear one hit deep into a fearful trip. He had cried on the floor of Mark's room, fingers stuffed in his mouth in a poor attempt to keep his cries of terror muffled.

Back at home, demons would squeeze through the cracks of his drugged-out brain, all of them with faces of people who hated him: his high school teachers, his ex-girlfriend, a father he didn't know. 

With long fingers, clothed in shadow and spewing words of hate, they berated him until Tyler was crying hard enough that he was gagging with sobs until he finally vomited on himself. 

Then everything would go dark and Tyler would wake ten hours later with foul stomach acid gluing his shirt to his torso and tears dried on his cheeks. 

It was always the same: laying on the floor in an unholy concoction of bodily fluids, Tyler would tell himself this was it, no more drugs. He swore he was done with crying, done with the bitter tastes, the filth, the terror. 

Maybe it was the boredom or the self-loathing, but despite his repeated promise to himself that this would end, Tyler continued to drop acid every weekend. 

This weekend, so far from home and bad influence, seemed to be no different. 

Tyler chooses Spongebob, pocketing the other two hits in his pocket as he pops one tab in his mouth. 

This time, Tyler expects it to be the same. 

He waits for the demons to descend upon him and rip him apart as LSD dissolves on his tongue. But five minutes pass in silence.

No faces of his enemies haunt him, none of the walls are melting, no nightmares move toward him, nothing. 

Tyler frowns. 

Of course Mark had given him acid that was more paper than chemicals. It's a dud, a waste of time, a lack of security that comes with the familiarity of feeling like complete utter shit. 

Mark fucked him over one last time and Tyler begins to think all about how those bad influences that called themselves his friends had fucked him over for so long. 

In a barn in the middle of Ohio at midnight, acid dissolving on his tongue, Tyler feels used, tricked, unloved. 

And then he looks up and Tyler sees him.

The acid wasn't as shitty as he thought because he's hallucinating something insane, something he's never seen before. The image apparating in front of him is not a demon, no, this is a ghost with the form of a Greek god. 

A man’s figure glows against the dark, his torso poured in white marble like the purest milk from back in the times of Moses; he’s raining from the sky, straight from Heaven. The strip of hair down the center of his head burns like fire.

A feet away from Tyler, the man floats thirteen inches above the ground in slow motion movements as if he's underwater. Tyler can't make out his features when his skin is glowing but he knows he's something amazing.

Tyler is taken with the image of perfection in front of him. 

The aura he emits is the absence of hurt, fingers mending his heart, love that envelops him with the quiet promise that things will be better; Tyler feels warm. 

There's a feeling of love and comfort radiating through the air and he falls forward with a deep grunt, words no longer possible when his mind is scrambled with drugs and heavenly images. 

Tyler needs to be closer to this foreign figure that comforts, not destroys him, so he crawls forward, hands slipping across the loose hay that sprinkles the dried floorboards of the barn. 

Splinters dig deep into his palms and knees.  Drool leaks from his mouth and drips past his bottom lip. He blinks again with his eyes trained on the feet floating before him. Tears he didn't know were forming fall gently. 

This time, they come for reasons other than fear. 

Tyler sits back on his knees when he finally makes it to his feet, throwing his head back so he can gape up at him. He wants to reach out, touch the embodiment of the warmth that he's lacked for so long, but it's as if he’s in shock. 

His entire being is paralyzed.

Tyler watches the god stupidly, mind and body overwhelmed.

Thin fabric flowing with anti-gravity around his waist, the perfection of his form and the feeling of love that consumes Tyler is ultimately too much and he's spitting up on himself again. 

Vomit clinging to his shirt, tears drying on his cheeks, threads of saliva hanging off his chin like spiderwebs- Tyler has never felt so human. 

He wades in his own filth but doesn't feel sorry, doesn’t want to say this will be the last time.

For the first time, Tyler feels present, at least up until his vision is dimming to a deep obsidian, nothingness.

The way he loses control of his body and falls on his face comes as a surprise.

What also comes as a surprise is the state of the barn the next afternoon as his uncle wanders in.

A bucket filled with poured plaster from the shed, planks of wood piled on the floor, tools and nails littering the ground, an exhausted boy moving with mania in his bones, forearms dipped in white working over the chicken wire in front of him.

His uncle asks Tyler what the thing in front of him is supposed to be and the boy responds in a voice of deep seriousness, “A god.” 

His uncle’s face contorts in clear confusion and Tyler thinks it's because he has never tasted sour chemicals, never had his vision cross, never seen an actual god in the dark.

Tyler is one of the blessed.

The sculpture Tyler forms is of curdled milk smeared in textured chunks, a silver grate of chicken wire that peaks out of his torso as if he is a robot shedding his skin, calculated, strong. 

Burlap material is strewn across her like a robe but it dries too stiff and not as flowing as it looked when he saw it float before him in the middle of the night. 

It is not him. 

It is the product of human incapability.

Tyler sits in the barn for the rest of the day and stares at his poor recreation of real beauty. He feels like shit again. He's waits for night, waits for the opportunity to not feel like shit.

Sunlight wanes through the cracks in the walls and soon enough, the barn has turned to a black hole that wipes out all of his senses with its deep darkness. It’s midnight and only two squares of paper sit in his palms. 

One is Ren and the other is Stimpy and it's a sad affair when choosing which one to eat because here in his hand, Tyler can see the end of his experience, the end of feeling okay.

Two trips left, two chances to see God. One now, another later. 

Tyler doesn't know when later is; time gets confused in his mind. 

Seconds and minutes tangle together until he can't remember what day it is, what month it is, when he's supposed to leave this fucking farm. Maybe he'll be here forever. 

Tyler is fine with that. 

He’d stay here in the barn, with his hallucinations and the taste of acid on his tongue, surrounded by planks of wood and plaster, forever changed by a God conjured up in his imagination. 

Tyler remembers how he felt loved last night and he can't help but drop both hits of acid at once.

Two hits kick in faster than one and it only takes sixty seconds for Tyler to see the same one that changed him. He watches as the God of Ohio descends upon the empty space tucked away in the corner of the country, forgotten by everyone, absent of everything. 

His eyes are dry and there are no fingers in his mouth forcing cries back behind his teeth. There's no Mark here, no decaying brains, no one conspiring against him. 

The god’s presence before him heals Tyler’s soul, makes him feel loved, makes him a person after being an animal for so long. He's no longer a nuisance, unwanted, hated. 

Everything's okay. 

Tyler only feels okay with his god in front of him. 

The man of fire hair and chiseled muscle drifts closer, feet floating above the ground and Tyler has enough control of his body to wrap his arms tight around himself. He wants it to be real, wants him to be real. 

But he’s not.

This heavenly figure is only a hallucination of a brain that is falling apart. 

Tyler is not as confused as Mark is. Tyler know reality, knows that in a few hours he will again be vomiting and crying and passing out, only to wake feeling worthless again. 

The bad influences are so far away yet here they are in his mouth. 

They're still with him, in his blood, at the back of his brain like stalking shadow figures conspiring against him. He's not changed, not really. 

Tyler only changes for as long as acid warps his mind.

The heavenly figment of his imagination is coming nearer and Tyler is drooling and staring, feeling so human next to an angel that is perfect. He feels whole at this one moment, no memory of hurt or loneliness as long as he's looking up at him. 

Tyler knows when his body cleanses itself of poison, he will remember the shortcomings of his life, the fact that he's stuck here on a farm with no more acid left, no more chances to see the only thing keeping him sane in a state of insanity.

The demons wearing the faces of everyone he knows will be waiting back at home but he's on a farm in Ohio right now, feeling complete for a few hours. 

White light, underwater, the male form poured liquid porcelain- beauty eternal. 

Tyler hallucinates that he is loved.

Tyler pretends he is okay.

Tyler can still taste antifreeze.


End file.
